sahara nights

(I highly encourage you to play the song before reading on, best part starts around 2nd minute)

What a night that was! After watching the sunset from atop a dune (see previous post on Sahara days), we literally rode our camels toward the rising orange full moon ahead of us. Unfortunately, it was impossible to take a photo of it while being shaken around the camel’s back, but it was so surreal that it almost felt like being in a movie. Very powerful moment.

Naturally, when we reached the camp I couldn’t resist to take some shots around the area. The light from the moon made it almost look like day time, as you can see below. Though not as bright as we were hoping, the stars were still incredibly crisp. We were lucky enough to be in the Sahara around the time of the Jupiter and Venus alignment, a star shows at its finest. The two are clearly visible in some of the shots.

After dinner we climbed on top of the dune right next to our camp. What seemed like a casual walk up turned out to be an almost hour-long very intense climb, but the view was so worth it! One could easily see 50km in each direction, all the way to Algeria on one side. Unluckily, my camera took a nose dive in the sand while shooting at the top with the tripod. Needless to say, cleaning the super fine grains cost me some nerves (and cash later on, actually), but at least there was some redemption – running full speed down the steep dune. Somehow it was nearly impossible to fall down. Seriously cool.

Afterwards, we just lit up a camp fire and spent the next couple of hours enjoying the warmth of it and talking to one of our guides from a tribe that actually lives in the dessert. The stories he had to share certainly made for a great end of the night.

Yes I would love to. Just went to the Pinnacles in the Western Australian desert this week, already liked that, so the Sahara must be incredible!🙂 Thanks yeah I started posting some pics as I love photography – and your post inspired me:)